


Over My Dead Body

by tori1116



Category: DCU (Comics), Green Arrow (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Hood/Arsenal (Comics)
Genre: A Bit of Emotional Showdown Involved, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, But Not in a Way You May Think, Canonical Character Death, Dumbness Involved, Fix-It, Ghost Roy, Jason is a Casino Owner now apparently, Language, M/M, My Understanding of Soft and Sweet Stuffs, Post-HiC, Red Hood and the Outlaws #31, Red Hood and the Outlaws #34, The Hat and Paris, They kind of left me no choice but to write this, and He Has a Dog, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-01 02:44:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18791386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tori1116/pseuds/tori1116
Summary: Roy comes back as a ghost, discovers what happened to his old hat, follows Jason onto their second trip to Paris, and eventually gets into a little bit of drama telling Jason how he actually felt about the termination of their partnership.





	1. Chapter 1

Suddenly, he found himself standing on the edge of a mountain, with the sun shinning bright upon him in the clear sky and the familiar landscape of Wellpinit opened up generously before his eyes.

Although he could recognize right away that he was on the mountain of the Spokane Reservation, he had little idea of how he had gotten here in the first place.

Frowning in puzzlement, Roy stood staring out of the mountain top, trying to recall what he had been doing just a moment go. Some noises from a near distance captured his attention before he could figure it out.

Surprised to see the familiar face of his tribal bother, he left his question behind, turned away from the edge of the mountain and ran up at the man. “--Hey, Bird,” he started, a hand holding out to reach the man’s back, and stopped short at once with increased confusion when Bird—with a solemn look on his face and was carrying the old red bow Roy had left long ago in the Spokane tribe in his one hand—walked straight past him as if he hadn’t seen Roy at all.

Taking a glace around, he realized it wasn’t just Bird who was in the Rez with him; there’re a whole bunch of people up here on the mountain—a strange mix of groups of families and friends of his that were made from different times and different places, which never before in Roy’s life had been brought together like this.

There’re some other folks from the tribe besides Bird, bustling about at an opening in the front, looking like they’re busy setting up for a ritual; he couldn’t see what ritual it was with the people upfront blocking his field of vision, but he could see Dinah was there and she was helping them out, alongside her were some of the Titans, a few civilian friends Roy had made from the streets or the Sobriety Program, and even a couple of people from the Justice League for some reasons. Ollie was here also, standing alone at the side in a terrible sulk.

Although the people were from different places with different lives, they were all dressed in dark color and wearing the same sorrowful look on their faces at the moment.

With growing confusion and a faint dawn of trepidation in his mind, Roy approached the few people who weren’t busy setting up things in the front, asking them one by one about what’s the occasion, only was ignored completely by every single of them.

Soon, the ritual was ready. Roy followed behind the people slowly as everyone turned to gather up to the spot.

Bird, who apparently was the host of the ritual, stepped up to the front at the side of a wooden coffin.

“Oooh,” Roy uttered in a dawn of comprehension at the framed picture of himself next to the coffin, gradually remembering everything—The Sanctuary, the scream, the sudden confusion and the complete blackout in his senses that had instantly followed.

So that’s why everyone was acting like someone had died, thought Roy dryly, turning his head around and looking once again with dimmed eyes at each one of the sorrowful faces of the mixed group.

In the meanwhile, his tribal bother began the funeral speech in the front.

It was a nice speech, and he was glad that it was the tribe who held his burial ritual—glad that after everything, after all those years, he had still gotten to return to his beginning in the end, still gotten to be recognized as one of the Children of the Sun.

As much as he loved the cities and could hardly imagine himself ever living without the craziness of them again, there’s no better resting place for him but up here on this mountain, with the quiet woods leading back to his old childhood home guarding his back, and upon him a clear view of the sky, from which the sun and the moon and the stars would take turns looking over him all days and all nights.

Bird said at the end of his speech, “It is Spokane tribal tradition to leave personal items to help Roy’s spirit on its journey.” Roy drew towards the coffin instinctually, as his bother of the tribe placed on top of it the old red bow he had been carrying.

In an attempt to pick up what was returned to him, Roy held out a hand.

Seeing his fingers went thoroughly past the bow, he grew frozen in an instant, then presently moved his lips into a faint wry smile and lowered his hand back to his side.

For a moment there, he really had thought that, just like Bird had said, by receiving his lost item, something would happen and he would be guided to the next place; only nothing had happened and he was still here in his own funeral, so he guessed he might have to sit through the whole thing.

Throwing himself on top of his own coffin, he sat upon it and listened to some more people stepped up after Bird to give their speeches one by one.

Ollie was the last one who spoke. When he finished, he stepped back to Dinah, who met him with a hug.

“Take care of him, ol’ sis,” he spoke softly to Dinah from his sitting spot on top of the coffin, eyes staring at the hugging couple with roused emotions.

While his heart ached from the shared sorrow he saw on the friendly faces and all the beautiful speeches he had received, he also found himself coming into the most peace he had ever been.

The tribe had never taught him the fear of death but rather the fear of the return of the dead, and although Roy couldn’t say he was very good at following the tribe’s tradition and teaching, he did believe that when most people died, their spirits would leave for another place, and those who remained in this world were the lost spirits that were wild and feral and should very well be afraid of.

Given that the thought of ghosts kind of crept the shit out of him since he was a kid, he had never imagined he would ever come back as a ghost, let alone attending his own funeral in a ghost form. But now, he was quite glad he had gotten to stay, even just for a little bit--to have the chance to be among his friends and families for the one last time.

Most of the people here had been lost to him once, and hadn’t been returned to him until just recently.

As much as he did hope his time with them could’ve been longer, he guessed that having to have these people back in the end and all gathered up for him at this very moment--despite whatever prolong discords they had had with him in the past, or how many years of separation there used to be between them—was far better than how he would’ve imagined things to be, and it would be enough for him.

Even Cheshire was here, much to his surprise.

“Didn’t know you care, pretty cat,” he said with a smirk, regarding the woman who was standing far off from him and everyone else in the shades of the forest trees.

After the last speech from Ollie, the people began to move the coffin towards the burial site.

Riding on top of the moving coffin upon what he assumed would be his one last road in this world, Roy took another look around, keenly aware of the fact that there’s still one person he hadn’t gotten to see yet, whom he would very much like to see for the one last time before he moved on.

Thinking if the guy was here, he would probably be hiding in the shadows like Cheshire was, Roy scanned the forest side thoroughly with his sharp eyes.

He wasn’t here though. Probably still hadn’t caught the news yet.

 _Someone must’ve lost my invitation—_ Roy could imagine the guy saying sarcastically when he learned about the news and came to his grave one day.

It had got to annoy the shit out of him, having to miss the ritual, and to go all the way here to find and speak to Roy, but never again being listened by him—Roy thought to himself with his mouth curled up bitterly, kind of really hoping they could spend a little more time together, really hoping he could get to see the guy and hear his voice for the one last time.

All those things that had been left without saying, he really wished he had said them. A lot of things he had said to the guy upon all this time they had known each other, and never once he had told him what of the most importance.

Soon, the coffin was placed down inside the trench before his gravestone, and he guessed that was it.

Despite the thorn of regret in his heart and his growing wish to stay just a little bit longer, Roy closed his eyes and lied down onto his back in acceptance of his faith, letting himself sink guardedly through the lid of the coffin and into the dark.

As the people out there began to cover him fully with dirt, Roy turned into sleep, and was very much expecting himself to wake up in a few moments in a completely different place.

Only a couple of hours later, he woke up, and he found himself still lying inside the dark of the coffin.

Confused, Roy sat up in his own coffin and poked his head out of the ground above. Everyone had left after the ritual, there’s no one but him around the burial site.

Waiting on the spot for a few more moments, he then rose up fully onto the surface, and turned to sit before his own gravestone and wait for a little bit more.

Still, nothing he had expected to happen happened; he started to think that perhaps he wasn’t going anywhere at all.

 

***

 

When the guy came, it had been weeks after his funeral.

He was, at the time, lying before his gravestone with his limps spread out on the ground, totally exhausted and also very much depressed from his recent visits to a couple of friends and families he had managed to find outside the Rez.

Sensing a presence walking to his way, he opened his eyes, smiling up at the sight of the guy.

“Took you long enough. What you’ve been up to?” he said to Jason with revived spirit, picked himself up presently from the ground before his grave and turned to stand to the side, so the guy wouldn’t end up stepping right into his ghost body.

Seeing Jason continue his tracks to his grave quietly without a sign of recognition of his existence, the smile on Roy’s face came slightly to sorrow.

“I tried to reach you, you know—the first one I tried to reach out to, actually, since I didn’t get to see you during the ritual,” he went on, regardless of the fact that Jason wouldn’t be able to hear him. “I thought I should check up on you, to see if you’ve done anything dumb after we split up the last time. But I had no idea where you’re off to, and I couldn’t really pick up the phone and call to ask where you are with these stupid ghost hands.”

When Roy had first drifted down from his burial site to the camps, he had still had in him some expectation that something might’ve soon happened to him and he would’ve been brought away from the mortal world; only days he had been roving idly in the Rez and not one single thing had happened to him at all.

With the thought that he really wasn’t going anywhere grown more and more like a fact to him, eventually, he had decided to take his prolonged time on this world as a gift, and thought that he might as well just get back to his friends and families outside the tribe, given there’s basically nothing for him to do in here as a ghost.

It had turned out, there’re very little things he could get to do anywhere as a ghost.

For starter, no one he had come into contact with so far had seemed they were able to see him or catch the sound of his voice. Most of the people would just walk right through his body when he stood in their ways. And after his initial attempt to getting back to his friends and families with psychic power had failed and he had actually had to hop on a stopped car he had found on the road just to get out of Wellpinit and taken a lot of time and a lot of jumping up and down from rides to rides afterward in order to get to his destination, he had pretty much come to a realization that being a ghost kind of really sucked balls.

Without any mean of communication, it had taken him days just to find Ollie, who, just like the few people he had turned to visit later on, could not be affected whatsoever by anything he did or said.

At first, he had thought that he could still stay by his friends and families’ sides, even though he couldn’t seem to be able to let them know he was right here with them. He had thought there must’ve been _something_ he could do--only there’s absolutely nothing he could seem to do for any of them so far being like this. He’s here but he didn’t exist.

With what he had formerly considered as a gift become quite like his childhood nightmare coming to life, he had returned to the Rez, through a days-long journey which was just as exhausting as his journeys outside but even more depressing.

“You remember how you told me that being dead was like the most unchallenging thing you’ve ever been through? That nothing really happened to you in your dead days and that when you died, you just sort of completely disappeared?” he said to Jason in a musing tone, “--Well, I guess it really is different for everyone. Because I’m still here, ghosting around--It’s fricking crazy, Jay. It’s like the most boring crazy thing I’ve ever done. Anyhoo, how’s your day? You did anything crazy without me lately?”

Not hearing a single word he had said, Jason turned to stand before his gravestone, stared at the name marked simply on it for a moment, then reached down a hand and put something he had been carrying in it upon Roy’s grave.

Roy’s eyes widened slightly in surprise.

“Oh you prick,” he said, letting out a laugh, and hunched down beside his own gravestone to look at the trucker hat Jason had just returned to him.

The old green hat he used to wear back in the days, up until the end of their partnership. The one he had lost in the place they had been living together at the time. Roy had thought he would never get to see it again.

After Jason had called an end on their partnership and walked off alone, he had returned to their place to pack up his stuffs in his bedroom, and seeing the hat missing from the rest of his stuffs, he didn’t bother to go in search for it, had figured he would just have to do without it, that it was just another thing he had lost.

The black baseball cap he had later replaced it with was nice and all, but he really did miss this old green one. The last time he had seen Jason, he had actually asked if he had ever returned to the safehouse and found it.

“ _No, sorry pal, never saw it,_ ” was how he had answered, and added soon after because apparently, he just couldn’t pass up any chance to call Roy a slob, “ _You sure that’s where you’ve left it? I mean, I didn’t really go back and check the place, but given how much you like to leave your stuffs everywhere, who knows where the hell you might’ve left that thing._ ”

What a liar.

“I never told you this when you were alive,” Jason was saying, “but I always hated that hat.”

“What, the new one?” retorted Roy with a snort. “—The one that I wouldn’t have come to wear if you would’ve just given this one back to me in the first place? How long have you been keeping it, you hat-stealer?”

Certainly, Jason did not answer.

Straightening his back once more at the side of his grave, Roy turned his eyes from the trucker hat to Jason, lips moving up into a faint smile mixed of amusement and woeful sentiment.

“You didn’t need to be an idiot, you know. You could’ve just asked if you wanted it,” Roy told him.

After saying a few more words to his grave, Jason turned away, heading back to the people who apparently had been waiting for him at a distance.

It wasn’t until now that Roy came to notice them. “I see you made some new friends.” He regarded the two men with delight. When he had received Jason’s call and come to find him in Gotham months ago, the guy had just lost both of his friends and been in a nasty breakdown with Batman. Although he knew Jason could take care of himself, he was kind of relieved to see that he wasn’t all alone at the moment but had still got some people by his sides.

Turned to stare after Jason for a moment longer, he then looked back once more at the hat on his grave.

He wondered if this was why he was still here, if the reason for his current inability to move on was that Jason had been keeping something of his to himself all this time.

He wondered, since now he had returned what Roy had lost into his possession like his tribal bother had done with his old bow, would the time for him to be released from this world finally come.

As much as he hoped he could just stay by his friends and families’ sides, it probably would be better if he just let them go and move on--What was he supposed to do besides moving on? Stuck floating around people in a ghost form and watching them go on with their lives, and never ever being heard or seen by any of them again, never ever being able to do anything to help anyone out, even if he could see clearly that someone needed his help? What kind of fuckery would that be?

“With all the messes you’re going through the last time, I’d never got the chance to tell you this,” he spoke his last words to Jason from in front of his own grave, eyes fixing on the returned hat upon it. “—But I really missed you, Jaybird. I really missed us.”

Before he reached for the tracker hat which he was having a strong feeling would be his key to the great beyond, he turned his head and took one last look over his shoulder at Jason, who had stopped on his tracks and was also looking over his shoulder at Roy’s way.

His gleaming eyes seized Roy at once to the spot.

For a moment, it had almost seemed like Jason was looking not at his grave but at him directly. Roy drew away slowly from the grave and the trucker hat upon it, mouth hanging loose in an urge to say something—anything, everything.

A shade of bitterness crossed Jason’s face. He averted his gaze before Roy could say a word. “Later, Roy,” with that, he resumed to leaving.

He glared briefly after Jason, then turned to give the hat on his own grave another look, then once again glared after Jason, eyes flashing all the while with battling thoughts and feelings.

“Oh fuck it,” he grumbled, leaving the returned hat on his own grave and running up to Jason’s side. “I’m going with you. And I’m going to try anything to haunt the _shit_ out of you. You may not know it now, but I promise you, buddy, you’re going to learn _very soon_ about the horror of my haunting--You _stole my hat_ , you prick. You’ve got to answer for that--”

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

The attack earlier from Cobblepot’s old employees had laid the front of the Iceberg Lounge into quite a shambles.

After taking a brief inspection of the recently trashed casino with the maintenance crew, Miguel, his new assistance, came to find Jason in his office and gave him a damage report.

“It’s going to take us weeks to clean up everything and fix the damages before we can be ready for business again, boss.”

“‘Boss’,” Roy parroted, snickering a little.

During the past few weeks, he had heard people calling Jason this plenty of times, and he still hadn’t stopped finding it funny. “I bet you’re loving this, boss man,” he turned his head around and said, tossing a look over his shoulder at Jason, who was sitting at a glass desk nearby and, sure enough, could not hear him.

Moving up from the side of the dog Jason had picked up from one of his trips, which apparently had happened before his visit to his grave, Roy drew to Jason’s side and hopped up onto the glass desk before him.

Soon as Roy had stopped stroking his ghost hand up and down her back as if he was actually petting her and moved away, the good old Canary Mastiff--which was what she was according to Suz, but neither he nor Jason could confirm that since neither of them really knew much about dogs—raised her head slightly and looked after Roy from her spot on the floor with her calm eyes.

Given that she was a full-grown dog with a rather composed nature, she didn’t often bark or get overexcited unless she had caught a sense of danger. Weeks since Roy had met her, and never once she had barked at him, or showed any distinct sign of acknowledgement of his presence; but judging by the way she would sometimes stare fixedly at his direction, he did believe that even though she couldn’t see him all too clearly, she could at least still sense him.

Putting down the tablet through which he had gotten into contact with Wingman just a moment ago, Jason said to his assistance suggestively, “I’m kind of excepting us to have a reopening in three days, Mig.”

“Órale,” responded the kid, amused and chuckling slightly at first, then soon dropped his smile and grew transfixed in bewilderment when he came to see the plain look on Jason’s face. “Dios mío…you’re serious.”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Jason shrugged. “We can’t go out of business now when we’ve only just started it. It’ll make me look like a chump in the eyes of the public, let alone the money we won’t be making during the maintenance.”

“Ay, yes,” the kid said, scratching his head, “But three days, boss? Having everything repaired in three days is going to be…”

“Overall manageable?”

“--Impossible,” Miguel sighed.

“Sure he is,” remarked Roy crisply with a smirk, facing the kid sideways from his sitting spot on the edge of the desk before Jason.

Unresponsive to his remark, the kid finished in a resigned tone, “--But if that’s what you say we should do, then I guess I’ll try to get the casino up and running in three days.”

“That’ll be great, Mig,” replied Jason appreciatively.

In a moment, after Miguel had left his office and resumed to work in the front of the casino, Jason pulled out his phone from his suit pocket, called the private jet company and made an arrangement with them for a flight tomorrow.

Once everything was set, he tossed the phone down on the desk next to his tablet, and leaned back in the armchair with his long limbs sprawling out loosely.

“--So, Paris, huh? That could be fun,” Roy started lightly from before him, eyes moving from the tablet and the phone to Jason, who never until now showed any sign of fatigue. It had been a busy evening, with Cobblepot’s men storming the Iceberg in search of their missing boss and the truth behind Jason’s recent purchase of Cobblepot’s property and all that.

The guy had been engaging himself in all sorts of work lately even since he was back in Gotham, and never once throughout this whole time, from his big return to this city to his commencement of a new token career as a casino owner, had he taken a proper break.

Weeks since he had followed Jason out of his own burial site, he had never heard the guy say anything about his plan to anyone. Roy wasn’t sure what Jason was planning to do in here with the Iceberg. It was clear that making a dramatic comeback in Gotham as the supposedly dead ward of Bruce Wayne returned from overseas and embarking onto the casino business wasn’t Jason’s only goal in here, notwithstanding the fact that he definitely enjoyed the commotion he had stirred upon the public and the vexation it had brought to Batman. There might have been a couple of things he had seen in Jason’s recent doing that he found somewhat questionable, but given that he was a ghost and, despite his great efforts, couldn’t make himself be reckoned by anyone so far except for maybe a dog, he had no way to find any answer out of Jason--As for now, there’s not much he could do really, except for trusting the guy to know what he was doing, same as he had always been.

Regardless of how many dumb things he knew Jason was actually capable of, he had never had any doubt about his intelligence and ability, and he knew whatever he was doing, he must be doing it with his heart in the right place, which was where his heart remained always.

While the guy sat slumped in the armchair in a leak of fatigue from the busy evening, Roy regarded him closely. Though he didn’t exactly seem like he was drained from weeks of going about business but rather pumped by all those working, he should probably use a break before he strained himself.

Some time in Paris could be fun and relaxing; although, according to what he had heard from Jason's previous conversation with Wingman on the comms, he was only going to Paris to take care of Cobblepot’s overseas investors before they came asking for the Penguin like the mercenary group had done earlier tonight and raising some more troubles for him.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt if he could have some fun that didn’t take in any form of violence in the meanwhile. “I love Paris, so many hot women in there, and hot guys too,” Roy continued, “It sucks that we didn’t get to stay a little bit longer the last time--What’s the hurry, seriously? I know we’re on a job and it’s our first job as freelancers so we kind of needed to look efficient and all, but c’mon, man--it’s Paris, the city of love.”

He had never been to Paris his whole life apart from that one time, where he had just gotten back with Jason after a short separation and the two of them had been trying out a new business model.

There had been a lot of fighting, naturally, and a lots of mimes, which were unpleasant, and they had had a dinner at the Eiffel Tower, very fancy, and very nice despite the mimes that had burst in some time during the dinner--but besides that, they hadn’t really gotten to do much fun stuffs in the city. Nothing such as having a romantic encounter, like most people would normally expect themselves to have in the loving streets of Paris.

No one single encounter Roy had come upon that time. No one single love-making for him in Paris, the city of love--the closest he had gotten was the exchange of blowjobs with Jason during their flight back to the state.

 _“What do I have to do to make you stay quiet for the rest of the flight, Roy? You want me to give you a blowjob in the bathroom? ‘Cuz if that’s what it has to take to stop your from complaining about not having sex in Paris, I’ll do it,”_ was what the guy had said, a while after the plane had taken off.

Seeing the guy had never showed any sexual interest towards him before, Roy hadn’t really thought Jason was being serious then, he had just wanted to ruffle the guy mostly. _“Sounds cool, let’s do it,”_ was how he had replied, and been caught by surprise when he had seen Jason, after staring briefly at him with a vexed look, rise up from his seat next to Roy and motion him to get up and follow him to the bathroom.

That’s where it had all started, now he remembered.

They had gotten together a lot like that since then—getting together, or fooling around, or banging, whatever it was they had been doing that whole time. Roy had always had trouble to find the right word for it back before the end of their partnership, back when he was alive, and now he was dead, and still.

“I really did love Paris, you know,” he spoke in a whisper.

Before his glinting eyes, Jason moved up in his seat, in a slow and somewhat hesitating manner, casted his eyes at Roy’s way and stared intently at the spot.

Seized by the sudden look in his eyes—the flashing recognition he thought he saw--Roy leaned forwards instinctually, a hand holding out to Jason.

Before Roy’s hand could reach him, Jason lowered his eyes, reached his own hand past Roy and picked up his phone from the desk.

After hanging in the air for a bit, Roy’s hand fell back to his lap. He sat on the side in silence as Jason called to check on Isabel--the beautiful flight attendant he had dated some time ago, who had been having a nice reunion with him in the casino earlier this evening until she had been escorted out during the outbreak.

“Hey, ha, yeah, sorry about that whole mess earlier,” Jason started in a moment after the call had gone through. “—What, me? No, no I’m fine. Can’t say the same about the place though—No, no I’m just kidding, nothing too serious, really. Don’t worry about it. We’ll be up and running again in just a few days—And uh…yeah, yeah, I’m glad you’re okay too—So, listen, with all the craziness that happened tonight, I totally get it if you don’t want to meet again, but—Yeah? For real? ”

He stopped and turned to listening on the phone for a moment, mouth curling up gradually into a pleased smile.

Growing intrigued by what Isabel was saying, Roy bowed down his head and pressed his ear against the back of the phone.

It would appear Isabel was big enough to forget about the whole fiasco earlier and also all the other craziness she had gone through for dating Jason back in the days, and seeing now he had left behind all the crazy stuffs in his old life and gotten a much normal life as a decent casino owner, she would very much like to see him again.

He liked Isabel. She was attractive. She was nice. Perhaps a little bit misguided at the point, but who said being with her wouldn’t eventually turn out to be the motivation for Jason to build up some actual normal life.

“That’s excellent,” Jason was saying on the phone, “But I actually have to go to Paris tomorrow, I…You’re flying to Paris too? Well, when? Yeah, no no, we can meet there. Sure, I’ll text you about the time and the place later. Okay, see you then--”

After the call had ended, he put down the phone and turned to stare briefly at its screen.

Roy started with a faint smirk, “What did I say, Jaybird?--The city of love.”

“...'The city of love', huh?” Jason muttered to himself a second later, softly and ruminatively, then let out a huff of chuckle.

There’s a collection of booze and empty glasses behind Roy on the desk. Picking up one of the bottle and two glasses, Jason put one of the glasses in front of himself and the other one slightly on the side. Then he filled them both with liquor.

“I suppose it doesn’t really matter whether you’re on or off the wagon now,” he said in a light whisper, picked up the glass before himself, and clinked it against the other one near to where Roy was sitting on the desk. “--Cheers, Roy, we’re going to Paris again.”

“Yeah, I know,” replied Roy with a flat note of irony in his voice, looking at Jason sideways as he cleared the drink.

 

***

 

“I know you want to make a brand for yourself and you kind of have a theme going on, and you know I like the color just as much as the next guy…but boy, you _really_ need to get easy with this whole red thing,” he remarked from the side with a wry smile of derision, regarding the open wardrobe-slash-armory, from which Jason was packing his gears and some changed clothes into his suitcase.

Since he didn’t plan to stay long on the trip and had reckoned he would just be dealing with guns most of the time, he didn’t pack along much with his work gears save for a spare set of civilian clothing, including the three piece suit combined with items in black or red color from the vast collection of identical black or red items in his wardrobe, that looked exactly like the one he was currently wearing.

In the huge-ass wardrobe inside the huge-ass suite at the top of the Iceberg Lounge he owned and could easily made many big money with, all the guy had got to go with his many black tailored suits were the many same red shirts and nothing more.

“What’s the matter with you?” Roy shook his head, turning away from the wardrobe and the collection of red shirts in it. “You could afford to live in a suite and fly in a private jet, which I’m very jealous of, by the way—but you can’t afford to get yourself some different clothes in some different colors? What’s going on in your mind, buddy? You used to wear more different clothes in more different colors—I get now you have to go around in a business suit all the time and you can never go wrong with a black jacket, but if you have to go around in a black business suit all days, you could at least try to match it with something besides a red shirt, so people wouldn’t end up thinking you have an obsession or something—How about a blue one, huh? You want to get a nice blue shirt? Or white, that always brings out the color of your eyes--”

Standing outside the wardrobe at the side of his bed, Jason paused shortly, hands hanging transfixed over the suitcase he had just finished packing and was about to close.

“Do you think I have too many red shirts?” he asked reflectively, glancing at his collection of red shirts inside the open wardrobe.

Suz, who had come to find him in his bedroom a moment ago, shrugged in front of the bedroom door across him. “It does seem to be the only kind of shirts you have in your closet,” she responded simply.

“How do you think of me in a white shirt?”

“I think it’ll be nice,” she said in a nonchalant voice, “Just don’t expect me to go get it for you, boss. Me and my girls are only here to roughing up people like you paid us to, doing your shopping isn’t in the contract.”

“It’s cool, Suz. I’d never ask you to go buy me clothes,” Jason reassured his former-enemy-turned-helper. “It’s good enough for me if you just keep on roughing up people with your Spice Girls sisters—and it’s not like you’d know much about men’s wears anyway.”

“Oh you think I don’t know much about men’s wears, kid? Like I don’t know much about _men_? Like I’ve never been with a lot of men before?” retorted Suzie Su sharply, crossing her arms over her large breasts. “—Are you trying to take a dig at my _appearance?_ ”

“Absolutely not. What kind of person do you take me for?” replied Jason innocently, “I’ll never try to take any dig at your appearance, Suzie. I’m only taking a dig at your general personality and your propensity to kill or beat the shit out of people.”

Suz tossed him a sarcastic look in turn. Roy chuckled from the side.

Closed the suitcase on his bed, Jason then went to the wardrobe and pressed the switch on the wall outside to shut its door.

In a few moments, after leaving a couple of instructions on what to do with the casino in his brief absence to Suz and making sure she didn't forget to come feed the dog, he headed out with the suitcase.

The Canary Mastiff looked up and grunted at him as he came upon her in the living room. He reached down a hand to pet the dog’s head. “See you later, dog.”

“You should really give her a name by now,” said Roy from the side, watching Jason and his dog fondly, and thinking to himself that, with all the whatnots he and Jason used to have in their place, how come they had never thought about having a dog.

Jason obviously liked dogs, and he was always happy to have some more companies. Sure, it might not have been such an ideal situation for the two of them to have pets with them constantly on the move, but they could probably find someone to feed the dog for them should they be away.

“What do you think about ‘Bow’? Or ‘Bowie’? We should call her ‘Bowie’, Jay—It’s perfect. It’s got the word ‘bow’ in it, and it could also be seen as a reminder of the magnificent David Bowie.”

“I should probably give you a name,” Jason murmured in a moment, eyes regarding the dog thoughtfully. “But I’m not any good at making names. I think I may just call you ‘Roy’.”

“You’re not calling her that,” protested Roy with a displeased look on his face.

Jason let out a faint snort of amusement. “--Hah, I’m just kidding. I’ll never call you that. Why give a good girl like you a name like that? That’s the name for _mad troubles--_ am I right or am I right?” he said to the dog lightly, giving her one more pat in the head before drawing his hand away and resuming to his tracks.

“You just have to be such a dick.” Roy shook his head, following slowly behind Jason on their way out to the private jet airport.

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Decided he would just eat his lunch on the plane, he hadn’t had much before his afternoon flight but a slice of toast and a cup of coffee from the Iceberg restaurant.

By the time he had gotten to the airfield, the plane was already waiting for him with its door open and the air-stair rolled down to the ground. A male flight attendant greeted Jason with a welcoming smile at the threshold, ushered him inside the passenger cabin and--once his suitcase had been put safely away and he had settled down on one of the leather seats—informed him the plane would be taking off soon in a few minutes, asked him for his preference of lunch, and then eventually disappeared behind the cabin door.

A while after the jet had taken off and turned to sail smoothly in the sky, the private flight attendant returned to Jason with a plate of food from the galley, placed it down onto the table before him, and disappeared soon again so Jason could rest and eat in private.

Over an hour later, came a polite knock on the cabin door. Jason had long since finished the food at the time, and had put the empty plate to the side and turned to sit relaxed in the chair with his tablet propped up before him on the table.

“Please, come in,” answered Jason thoughtlessly at the knocking outside, only glancing up from his tablet, on which he had been catching up on some TV show, when the cabin door opened and the flight attendant came in again shortly.

“--I’ve just spent the most educational hour in the cockpit with your pilot,” Roy was saying in a bright voice, strolling behind the flight attendant toward Jason’s way. “Great guy. Not my best choice for a flight instructor seeing he never answered any of my questions, but on the other hand, he also didn’t say anything to stop me when I touched all over the instrument panel.”

Jason turned frozen in an instant, as soon as he had picked up the familiar voice and its synchronized image.

Not noticing if there’s anything wrong, the flight attendant came to the side of the table before him. “Did you enjoy your meal, sir?” asked the flight attendant politely, smiling, and gesturing with a hand at the empty plate next to a drinking glass and an open bottle of iced champagne in a bucket on the corner of the table.

“Yes, very much. Thank you,” Jason replied with a courtesy smile, looking steadfastly at the flight attendant, who returned his smile, filled up his glass with iced champagne and asked if there’s anything else he could help Jason with.

In the meantime, the redhead, getting to Jason’s side presently after the flight attendant, continued talking to him, “I think I know how to fly a jet now. That’s one thing off my bucket list—or whatever list it is called for a guy to do _after_ he’d kicked the bucket.”

 _Not in front of the people,_ _you idiot,_ Jason said to himself promptly, seeing it from the corner of his eye the imagery of the redhead slumping down onto the seat beside him, and having to push back the immediate urge to look around to the ghost and indulge himself into a moment of fantasy of having the guy back with him once more.

Much to Jason’s vexation, the ghost, not only that he ignored him—very “Roy-like”, he supposed--stretched out his head under Jason’s nose, drawing along a rich glimpse of red hair in Jason’s peripheral vision as he leaned closer to check on the tablet Jason had put before himself on the table.

“What you’ve been doing with yourself anyway?” asked the ghost, before he took a look at the tablet on which a show was in play. “—Oh shit, is that the final season of _the Thrones_? The final season is out and you’re watching it _without me?_ ”

Jason turned off the screen at once. “Whu--? What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Turn it back on, you asshole, and go back to the first episode--” the ghost cried out, looking around at Jason with an immediate grievance.

With determination, Jason flipped the tablet facedown on the table. “That’ll be all, thank you,” he responded to the flight attendant in a level voice, keeping a steady gaze upon the guy and doing with his best effort to not look like some crazy guy who was seeing ghosts.

The vivacity and authenticity of the mirage this time was insane; the way he moved, the way he talked--the way he was acting as if he had really just gotten back the cabin from the cockpit, as if this was truly their trip together and he was on board of the jet with Jason all along.

It was as if he had never been gone. But he was, and--as Jason’s brief exchange with the flight attendant proceeded--the mirage of him was eventually gone too, leaving behind nothing to Jason but a bit of faint lingering noises in his ears.

The flight attendant picked up the empty plate and disappeared with it once more into the galley in a swift moment. He sat watching after the guy all the way down to the cabin door, until once again, he found himself sitting inside the passenger cabin in a relapse of silence and having with him absolutely no one else around.

Leaving the tablet on the table, Jason reached his hand out for the glass, picked it up and turned to stare reflectively at it for a moment, while wondering to himself what the cause of the sudden growth of his delusions was.

Usually, they’re just noises, uttering faintly and unintelligibly to him in the guy’s voice, about anything and nothing. He had been hearing them quite a lot lately, but had only come upon the vision twice.

Twice that the words had come to Jason’s ears with such clarity it was as if they were in truth coming from somewhere outside his own head, and he couldn’t help but chase them down to their root and, there he had appeared--holding Jason’s gaze with his glistening green eyes, looking like he was nothing but real with only a certain paleness and haziness about his appearance to tell Jason he was anything but.

Never before the mirage had seemed so vivid, and loud; never before it had stayed this long with him. Normally, it would just disappear as soon as Jason had come to his senses and drawn his eyes away from its ghostly face.

Given that he hadn’t had more than a few sips of champagne, he guessed it must have been the height, or the fact that he was on a trip to Paris, the very place the two of them had taken their first work trip together as partners.

The city had hardly seemed to be anything special to him at that time. All he could remember from Paris were the mimes, and Roy’s constant complain about not getting laid, and also the blowjobs they had given each other on their return flight, which, was kind of the only one thing Jason had deemed to be worth remembering truly.

“-- _Satisfied?_ ” he remembered himself asking, after he had refastened Roy’s belt, risen up once more before the redhead from below and pressed his own lips shortly and roughly against his.

 _“Insanely, just one more thing,”_ the redhead had mumbled, before he had reached a hand swiftly to Jason’s belt, sunk down in front of his bulge and, despite the fact that Jason had yet asked for one, begun to return the favor.

His keenness for reciprocation had always been one of his greatest qualities.

Letting out a faint snort of bitter amusement at the evoked memory, Jason raised the glass in his hand and took a sip.

Seeing he was no longer in the mood to catch up on any TV show, he put down the glass once again next to his tablet on the table, then turned to close his eyes and sink further in the chair, decided he would just take a nap instead.

He was expecting nothing but compete quietude from the rest of the flight; only the vague, phantom sound of Roy’s voice reached his ears again in a moment--so perhaps it wasn’t just the height or Paris. Perhaps it was really his constant madness from missing the guy growing tremendously over time.

“What are you doing? You can’t go to sleep--” He could hear the sound of Roy’s voice saying, not as clearly spoken as the words he had heard at his grave weeks ago, or in his own office last night, but in a manner so realistic that he felt like if he opened his eyes again, he might actually get to see the redhead right beside him again in the passenger cabin.

“We’ve still got hours to go, how am I supposed to spend the time in here? I’m in a jet full of things I can’t touch—Hey, hey, listen to me, Jason— _Jason_ —turn, _the fucking Thrones_ , back, on--”

Despite his urge to look and response, he refused to be tricked and kept his eyes shut, knowing if he ever opened them, he would either see before him nothing at all, or once again a sight of something that would soon fade away from him, something that had never been there in the first place.

It wasn’t the first time he had come to hear or see things that weren’t there. Back when he had just returned from death, he had had the vision of the Joker following him around and laughing and taunting him quite frequently, and he believed he might’ve even caught some glimpses of his mom a couple of times after her death in the empty apartment they used to live before he had been evicted from it--so he was pretty much used to himself being crazy and, as crazy as he was on having to hear from him and hold sight of him and talk to him once more, he knew the best way to keep himself from being lost inside the depths of craziness was by not diving headlong into it.

Same as he had expected, the voice faded away after a quick moment.

Upon drifting slowly into sleep inside the passenger cabin, Jason wondered to himself if he had ever told Roy just how much he had missed him the last time they had met. He felt like he had. He hoped that he had.

He hoped that, if by any chance that he hadn’t, he had still got to tell the redhead in the future that how crazily he missed him, and maybe also a couple of some more things he had yet said.

A lot he had yet said—things he hadn’t been ready to say during their partnership, and had no longer seen any point of saying them after. He wondered if he should try to say them to the guy when he came back.

 _You better come back soon--_ he murmured to Roy, not the one from his own lunacy, but the one faraway— _Don’t force me to go and get you, Roy. If I have to go and get you, then you can bet your idiot ass I’m gonna slap you so hard, you’ll wish you’re dead_.

He fell fully into sleep then, and felt a familiar hand touching his shoulder a couple of hours later.

“Wake up, Jaybird, we’re here,” said Roy’s voice from his side.

Only when he stretched his eyes open and looked up, he found with him no one in the passenger cabin but the flight attendant, who was standing hunched before him with a polite hand on his shoulder, smiling a refined smile, and presently informed Jason that the plane had already made its landing on Paris.

 

***

 

Isabel’s flight was a day behind his and she wouldn’t be free from work until tomorrow evening, which seemed to be perfect for Jason, who had some works he needed to get done on the first day.

After a quick stop in the hotel, he went to meet up with Wingman, his current help and contact, who had flown in earlier on his own and was waiting for Jason at their rendezvous in a dock. By the time the two of them spoke, a couple of Cobblepot’s foreign investors were already on board of their planes to the city, while the rest of them still had got some stuffs to take care of in their own regions and would only be flying in tomorrow, when their meeting about the recent change of ownership of the Iceberg Lounge and what they should do about it would be held at midnight.

All the preparations for his drop-in to the meeting were completed in one night. The next day, while Wingman remained keeping tracks on the investors somewhere or was off to do whatever mysterious things he liked to do in his free time, Jason, not really had much to do since morning, decided he would pass the time by roaming idly in the streets of Paris, where many amusing street arts and performances and quaint shops and buildings were found.

All the way he walked by Jason’s side, and came to check out with him a variety of funny things the guy had stopped to check out on the streets, many of which the two of them had yet gotten to check out during their last trip together.

It was a lovely walk they was taking, though it definitely would have been better for Roy if he was actually hanging out with Jason on the lovely streets of Paris, and not hanging around the guy without him ever noticing.

After stopping before a string orchestra performing on the street, Jason headed to a sidewalk café for a late lunch, then stayed sitting around and playing with his phone at the outdoor table under the warm sunlight, until the sky above grew from azure to a carmine red and the time of his date with Isabel was approaching.

Roy, sat lazily across him and had been watching the people on the street with idle interest the whole time, moved up after Jason as he turned to leave.

The restaurant Jason had chosen for the date was over a half an hour walk away, but since he wasn’t in a hurry, he decided to walk there; and since Roy--as much as he longed to hop on a fast ride and feel the wind on his face--didn’t mind some more nice walking and also didn’t really get tired at all from walking around in his ghost form, he had no complain about that.

Soon as Jason had reached the entrance of the restaurant and spoken his name to the receptionist, a waiter came up swiftly and ushered him all the way through the vast inner room to a table he had reserved on the terrace.

“Looking good,” remarked Roy in a pleased voice, lingering in the inner room behind Jason and the waiter and glancing about the exquisite interior.

Shortly after, he drifted out to the terrace, which was smaller than the inner room, but even more charming under the clear night sky with the Eiffel Tower shining brightly in plain view.

Jason had turned to sit down at the table by then. While the waiter was asking the guy what he would like for drink, Roy stepped past the table to the railing behind, propping up his hands on it as he spent a short moment to take in the whole view of the lighted nightscape.

“You know what, Jaybird? I think that as long as they don’t have more than a half dozen of mimes in here, this place may actually be perfect,” with his lips rising up into a smirk, Roy started thoughtfully, turning around to Jason at the table. “—Ah, I’m just pulling your chain. I know you wouldn’t forget to check the place for mimes first before you chose it for your first second-chance date.”

A bottle of champagne had already been served and opened, along with it on the table, there’re three glasses placed separately on each side, one of which was in front of Jason, one was across him and one at his side, all filled with champagne.

Drifting down onto the chair at Jason’s side, Roy, clearly had his wits misplaced somewhere under the clear night sky in the brisk evening air and the brilliance of all those strings lights hanging from the rooftop and the glowing tower outside, took a glance at the drink before him on the table and said, “It's not mock, right? ‘Cuz I kind of feel like now it’s okay for me to have some real stuff, even if it’s bubbly--”

His hand reached out for the glass of champagne and took a grasp at it.

Seeing his hand went entirely through the glass, Roy stared fixedly ahead of himself at an instant loss.

“…I can’t drink when I can drink. I can drink and I can’t drink,” he snorted presently with a note of dry humor in his voice, dropping his hand down and then tossed a faint smirk at Jason. “--Never mind. I should probably stick to my sobriety anyway. It’s not like I died a sober man just so I could get drunk as a ghost.”

With his eyes fastened upon Jason, he turned to think for a short moment. For some reason, it hadn’t really come to him up until now, he guessed it must have been the idle day he had spent doing nothing with Jason in the streets of Paris. Though he always had mood for relaxation—and relaxing today had been--idleness did have a way to do funny things to his brain.

He moved up from his seat next to Jason, who, at the moment, was staring out contemplatively at the glass on Roy’s side of the table.

“I should probably leave you alone now,” Roy said, brushing a hand over Jason’s head as a mockery of a patting. “Can’t have the pretty lady showed up and seen you’ve brought a ghost friend to your date like a complete loser. And get rid of the other glass, knucklehead—It’s only going to be the two of you.”

As he walked around the table upon his way back to the inner room, Jason rose up from behind him on a sudden.

“Sorry, I was running late,” Isabel started with a coy smile, walking past Roy at the entrance to the terrace toward the table the waiter had just showed her.

Leaving the two of them on their date, Roy stepped out of the restaurant and, staring off at the clear night sky, decided presently that he would just have to wait for Jason at the located site of the midnight criminal meeting to which he was going to invite himself in after his date.

Given Roy’s disabilities of driving on his own and calling for an Uber on his own with his new physical condition, the road to the site was quite long and kind of a pain for him to start on alone.

Accompanied by nothing the whole way but the enchanting night views of Paris, which somehow seemed far less charming to him at this point, he got to the site at an underground club, merely a little bit above schedule.

Wingman had already been waiting on the sniper spot at this point. In a few moments, the meeting began, and swiftly after, Jason arrived in his Red Hood suit.

It didn’t take long for the guy to state his massage to Cobblepot’s criminal investors and ensure they would stay out of his way.

Awhile later, he returned to the hotel and, since he had already finished what he had come to do in this city, informed Miguel and Suz through the comms that he would be coming back before the following evening as scheduled, then called the private jet company for an instant flight back to Gotham.

Roy regarded him from his spot at the hotel couch in confusion. “You’re really going to take off right away?” he started incredulously, after Jason had finished arranging for his return flight and put away his phone. “It’s only one thirty, man. Call to see if Isabel is still awake, and ask if you could come over to her hotel. Go back to Gotham later—You’ve got a huge chance to spend some hot hours in Paris with a hot flight attendant here. What are you…Pull out your phone, and stop _packing,_ you dummy--”

Before him, Jason continued packing his suitcase.

This was crazy. Roy huffed out a frustrated sigh, slumping down onto the armrest of the leather couch, and turned to watch the guy with a look of a mix of dismay and amusement.

“Just call her already. Don’t waste your chance with her,” he began again in a moment, softly and quietly. “She’s a good woman, Jaybird. And she could be good for you. You and her could be…what we’ve never been. What we’ll never be, I suppose.”

Letting out a faint snort, Roy lowered his gaze upon his own hands--pale and translucent they were, kind of like the jellyfish.

Given that no one single mirror he had come upon theses days had revealed to him the image of himself, Roy didn’t know how exactly he looked like these days, but he guessed he must’ve looked like however ghost was supposed to look like. Pale and translucent, kind of here but not really.

“Have you ever thought about it? What we were?—It didn’t really matter, I know. We’re best friends, we’re partners, what else could beat that? Why did it matter if we’d ever try to call each other something else in front of someone else. It didn’t matter. But I did think about it sometimes, and think it could be nice sometimes,” he said, “—By the way, I think that was a really shitty thing you’ve done, ending our partnership in a way like that, just walking out like that--and I’m kind of still upset with you about it. I never wanted to tell you, but hey, what’s going to happen now?”

Slowly, he looked up again from his own hands, and turned at once to astonishment when he saw Jason, had stopped packing a moment ago, standing transfixed across him in the suite room and staring furiously at his way with flashing blue eyes.

“The _fuck_ are you trying to do?” started Jason sharply in a grumbling anger. “What do you want? You want me to go to your grave and _apologize_? To cry and say I regret ending things like that? That I wish— _badly_ \--I didn’t have to end things with you like that? Or end things with you at all?”

Roy moved up swiftly with his mouth hanging open. Jason went on before he could say anything.

“I’m not going to apologize, ' _Roy'._ I did what I did for _your own good_ , so how about you stop playing tricks to my head and screw off.”

The initial rise of hope in Roy was drowned at once by a gush of temper. He returned to Jason roughly without thinking, “The fuck do you know about my own good?”

“I know you want to be a hero,” Jason replied, snorting. “I know you’re always meant to be a hero with the hero pals you needed. And I’m not one. I’ll never be one. What do you think I’ve been doing these days? You think I’ve been doing all these stuffs I’ve been doing in Gotham to be a _hero?_ You think Batman wouldn’t want to rush in and shut me down and toss me into Arkham the second I gave him the chance?—I left then, so you could get to be good without me, to have something _better_ than being with me.”

“So that’s really what you thought, and you’re still not done with this crap. I see,” scoffed Roy, shaking his head crossly. “—I didn’t care then and I still don’t care now if you’re a ‘hero’ like the rest of the guys. Do I want to be one myself? Totally. But that had _nothing_ to do with you and me.”

“It had everything to do with it.”

“No. No it fucking didn’t, and do you know what’s even worse than you acting like you’ve been dragging me down into your ‘dark road’ and not actually being the most important thing that had been keeping me on track that whole time?--You didn’t ask, not once, about what I actually thought and how I actually felt. You didn’t ask about my opinions on that, you didn’t care. You didn’t sit down and talk it over with me first. You just reached the conclusion all of a sudden, then decided all by yourself that it would be right and good for me if you’d just call an end on us, without asking me if that’s what I wanted, if I ever felt the same. Whether or not we should split shouldn’t have been your decision to make, Jason. It should’ve been _ours_. We could’ve figured out the answer _together_ , whatever the answer was.”

“So what if we have talked it over,” retorted Jason in a cold grave voice. “-- I was looking out for you, I wasn’t going to back down from that. It wouldn’t have made any difference if we discussed the matter and you know it. And you know how horrible it is to get into argument with you.”

“You walked out on me that day, without so much as giving me the time to catch up on what the fuck the big problem was and figure out how to solve it. I could’ve at least tried to fight for us. But you didn’t give me a chance to fight, so fuck you for that—And fuck you, for thinking you could get to decide what was good for me and what’s not. And fuck you, for only ever thinking of making contact with me when you’re in the middle of some deep shit, but never before _for once_ did you call and ask how I was doing--”

“I knew you’re with the Titans, I assumed you’re fine,” Jason cut in on him in a snap. “How the fuck was I supposed to know things in there would’ve gotten so bad you felt like you needed to go to rehab? And don’t act like I was the only one who never called--You didn’t call. You could’ve called me and talked to me.”

Sticking a gloomy stare at Jason’s face for a moment, Roy stepped ahead, looking to get outside the hotel suite so he could cool off by himself.

“…Fuck you,” as he walked, he said to Jason, “I’ve been trying to get your attention for weeks. If I knew this is how it’d be when you’ve finally come to see I'm here, I would’ve just stayed at my grave.”

For weeks, he had believed without a doubt, that if by any luck the guy had come to perceive his presence and realize he was here, he would be exhilarated, and when they talked face-to-face with each other again, it would be the nicest talk.

How horribly wrong he was.

Upon his way out of the suite, a porcelain vase on the desk came into Roy’s sight. He lifted a hand and, in a petty urge to make clear to Jason that just how unamused he was, swayed it quickly against the vase.

The guy was stanky rich now, he could pay for it—which was pretty much all Roy had thought, and he only came to notice something exceptional had happened until the vase fell off of the desk, crashing into pieces at his feet on the floor.

He glared down at the broken pieces in astonishment.

“How did you do it?” Jason spoke up abruptly, looking even more shocked and doubtful about the incident than Roy was.

“I don’t know. I just did,” responded Roy hesitantly, reaching down a hand at the broken pieces.

After a few attempts he had made to pick up one of the pieces on the floor had all failed, Roy moved up once more, slightly disappointed with the failures but still mostly glad that he had gotten to make physical contact with objects in the first place.

“I don’t know how to get a hold on it and do it again exactly, but I’m pretty sure I can figure it out in a while,” he turned to Jason and said. “I’m growing more powerful as a ghost, obviously. I can show myself to you now, and occasionally break stuffs.”

Jason looked at him with a strange stare. “You’re a ghost.”

“And your point?” replied Roy curtly, turning once more to his remained grievance at Jason as the excitement from the sudden incident started to wear off.

Unmindful of his obvious grievance, Jason continued in an uncertain voice, “You’re a real ghost. And you’re here the whole time.”

“I don’t get what you’re trying to say here. But I’ve already gotten enough craps from you to keep me fed for months, so whatever more crap you have to give me, do me a favor and save it.”

He turned away then, crossing his arms over his chest and heading once again to the door of the hotel suite.

“I thought I’ve been imagining you,” Jason was saying from behind him, “I thought I was just being crazy.”

Roy turned to an abrupt stop.

Arms lowering down at his sides, he stood transfixed with his back to Jason in complete silence.

A long moment later, he moved around slowly. “You thought you’ve been imagining me,” he started with a dull note of doubts in his voice, “You thought—how long did you think you’ve been imagining me?”

“Some weeks?”

“Wait, wait let me get this straight--” Pressing a hand over his forehead, Roy turned to articulate slowly, “You know about me for some weeks, and you’ve been ignoring me the whole time, because you thought you’re being crazy, and I was just the figment of your imagination.”

“Yeah, that’s…pretty much.”

“It has never come to you that I may be a ghost.”

“I’d never seen one single ghost before in my life,” averred Jason swiftly and bluntly, “Sure, I used to see Ducra after she died, but she’s a sorceress and an immortal. When she died she just sort of went on in an immaterial form, so she can’t really be a ghost. And I’ve never been one myself. And it’s not like I can see you _all the time_ \--Mostly I’d just hear your voice. I only saw you twice before this, and you’re always gone when I looked away. What was I supposed to think?”

Staring at Jason who had his embarrassment betrayed by nothing whatsoever save for the flicker in his eyes, Roy pondered for a moment with his brows creased together, then at last he asked, “--Are you actually like, honest-to-god dumb?”

Smartly decided he would rather not give any answer to that, Jason stood in a relapse of silence. There’s a bit of displeasure displaying on his face at first, but it was overthrown soon by a tender color of gratitude as he was looking fixedly at Roy, taking in every detail of his ghostly but factual features and, in a moment as Roy let out an amused snort at him and turned to double back to the hotel couch, chasing him all the way with his blue eyes that were gleaming and dedicated.

Dropping himself down onto the corner of the couch with an arm thrown over the armrest, Roy said to Jason teasingly, lips drawing up into a lopsided smirk, “So, does that mean you didn’t really want me to ‘stop playing my tricks and screw off’?”

“No,” Jason replied in a clear voice, walked after Roy to the couch and sat down beside him. “I actually miss the hell out of you, believe it or not. And I’m glad you’re back--not exactly how I’ve imagined it would be for you to come back, but in any way, it’s good to have you back, Roy.”

The smirk on his lips grew into a small grin. “I miss the hell out of you too, even though you’re honest-to-god dumb.”

Jason, certainly, snorted at that. Then, after staring at Roy for a moment longer, he cast down his gaze at his own hands, brows knitting together pensively in a sudden fall of grief.

“I should’ve asked you to not go to that sketchy rehab and come with me.” He looked up again at Roy. “Or I should’ve gone with you.”

“Nah, I’m glad you didn’t go. You probably would’ve just died with me in there.”

“So?” Jason shrugged. “I died before, death and I know each other. I got out of it once, I’m pretty sure I could get the two of us out of it in a snap.”

Fixed a ruminative stare upon Jason’s face, Roy thought it over briefly. Then he nodded his head, not especially excited with the thought of having Jason died along with him, but was indeed touched greatly by the fact that he would be willing to do so.

Although, Roy was quite certain that Jason, despite his own confidence, had only gotten out before by accident and didn’t really know one shit about his way back from death, he found that great, dumb, typical confidence of his was just as comforting as always, and sort of began to wonder if by sticking together with Jason, would they in truth be able to work their way out from a place as challenging as death.

If not and they’re stuck in there, at least the two of them would still have each other's company, thought Roy jokingly to himself in a moment, before he started again to Jason in a gracious voice, “You know what? I decided I’ll forgive you, for the shitty way you’d walked out on us.”

Not seemed to be feeling much grateful of his generosity, Jason regarded him doubtfully. “That’s nice, except I’m still not entirely sure I really need to apologize and ask for your forgiveness for that. I mean, could I have handled it better? Yeah, maybe. But I was in the middle of something at the time, and I didn’t want you to get caught between that. I was just looking out for you, I don’t feel sorry for that--”

“Yeah, doesn’t matter, I forgive you,” Roy cut him off swiftly.

Jason frowned at him for a short moment, then he grudgingly said, “Fine.”

“Good.”

Mildly vexed by the sly grin Roy had showed him in return, Jason shook his head a bit, before he shifted presently into a while of thoughts.

“Have you really said it?” asked Jason quietly on a sudden, eyes fixing on Roy who was seized by puzzlement at first but grew shortly to a wake of comprehension soon as he continued, “--That you loved Paris.”

“Yeah?” responded Roy in a ghost of a whisper, meeting Jason’s gaze with a complex shimmer in his eyes. “It’s a very lovable city.”

“It is,” Jason agreed, voice whispering and with a shimmer in his eyes also. “—I loved Paris too, Roy. A hell lot. I still do.”

“I still do too,” Roy returned him a quick and truthful answer, “A hell lot.”

He leaned forward then, crossing the space between them with an effortless tilt of his head, and laid his lips lightly upon Jason’s.

All Roy could find in the brief small contact was something of a ghost of a touch, and there was a high chance it had only come from his own imagination. Nevertheless, he was quite pleased with that and when he drew away, he had on his face a smile, which was responded quickly by an adoring look from Jason.

“I don’t ever wanna make you feel bad about your own body and it’s not that I don’t find it enjoyable kissing a ghost--” started Jason mildly in a moment with a smirk on his face. “But after we get home, we should probably go dig up your skin suit and start to see where the al Ghuls have been keeping their secret stash of green juice.”

“What if there isn’t one?”

“Then we’ll figure out some other way. Or at worst, we can still make do like this,” replied Jason unconcernedly.

Roy nodded his head. “Sounds like a plan to me,” he said, leaning further in the couch seat, which he found oddly comfortable to sit on despite his lack of sensing to material objects. “--Do you think we can stay a little bit longer in here? We could turn on that big screen and lie down together on the couch watching some French movie, and imagine we’re cuddling.”

“Tempting,” Jason replied, “But no, I’m afraid we’ve still got a plane to catch. I’m kind of planning on being back at the Berg before the reopening at night.”

With a confused frown on his face, Roy looked around abruptly. “—Shush, did you hear that, Jaybird? I think I just heard the sound of romance dropping dead.”

Jason’s look at him moved immediately to vexation. “Okay, I get it,” he grudgingly said, “We can stay till daytime, Roy--satisfied?

“Insanely,” replied Roy, sitting comfortably in the hotel couch and watching Jason all the while with a grin as the guy turned to pull out his phone and reschedule the return flight with the private jet company.

Few moments later, a horror movie of Jason’s chosen--out of his bitterness, for sure--had been pulled on to the screen and began to play, and as soon as Jason had settled down once again at his side on the couch, Roy said to him, eyes looking at the big TV screen in the Paris hotel, “We’re calling the dog ‘Bowie’, by the way.”

Jason tossed him a sideways glance, then he shrugged presently. “M'kay. Cool.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
